Nocturnal emission

So last night I was feeling good. I made a blog post (which hasn't happened since well before the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ) and went to bed relatively early. I say relatively, because over the previous couple of nights I'd actually been awake at and after sunrise. So, I fell asleep relatively early, was snoozing away... .

And that's when it happened.

The nose bleed.

I get periodic nose bleeds. I've never plotted them out on a calendar, or compared them to phases of the moon or anything, but there are "times" when I get them. Changes in weather, like a warming or cooling. Spring and fall are notorious for such events and the visits of my nasally hemorrhagic "friend." If I get a cold, in never fails, as soon as the sneezing and sniffles start getting under control, that tell-tale feeling of a runny nose will, sooner or later, run red.

Periods of stress sock me a stiff one in the proboscis too.

So, this was probably a case of the climatic arrival of spring and pulling a couple of all nighters to watch bad cable TV and my attempt to rule the electronic baseball empire on EA Sports' MVP Baseball game.

So, at 3:30 in the morning, I'm awakened from a sound sleep by the feeling of warm, thick liquid dripping inside my right nostril heading directly for my freshly changed bedsheets.

So I sprang out of bed, got the bleeding stopped, checked the sheets for bloody nasal discharge and crawled back into bed.

And then I couldn't sleep.

I couldn't sleep by 4 a.m., or 4:30 a.m. or 5 a.m.

By 6 o'clock, I decided I might as well get out of bed, because if I did manage to fall asleep, the alarm clock would not wake me it. The irony is not lost on me that my brain can ignore a blaring alarm clock when it is in the midst of slumber after days or weeks of sleep deprivation, but the first sign of a runny, or bleeding nose, while dead asleep can send my hand flying toward my face as my feet scramble for the floor and toward the bathroom, dragging my still sleeping body behind it.

The blood vessels, and the mind, work in truly warped ways in the middle of the night.

Now it is time to see if I can keep the restless mind at bay the little capillaries in my nose from popping a cork for the night. We'll see how it goes. There must be a better way to deal with this stuff. And, in the spirit of the previous post, getting laid probably wouldn't hurt the insomnia or the nose bleeds either. That's not to say it would help either, but it's worth a shot.

Spring
Insomnia
Nose bleeds